IT MUST be something in the water. Environmental optimism seems to be catching, especially among experts fed up with gloom and doom. From curbing climate change with solar farms to global forest restoration projects, green redemption is the new narrative. But if there is a politics of protecting natural resources, who is writing the rules?

The latest convert to green optimism is US water guru Sandra Postel. She is the author of pessimistic texts on the global water crisis, such as Pillar of Sand …

Article amended on
12 December 2017

When this article was first published, we mistook the title of Pillar of Sand